Best movies like 21 Red List

Fan Ruyi, a detective, finds himself framed after getting a top secret mission. Along the way he meets a blind performer and a powerful warlord's daughter that further complicates his quest to clear his name.

Shanghai gangsters grapple with lust and loyalty on the eve of war with Japan as they try to navigate an alliance with the enemy's army.

Aspiring dancer Phoenix lives in the countryside with her father, but she's got her eyes set on farther places. Jumping at the chance to move to shiny Shanghai, she makes ends and dreams meet by working as a janitor at an elite dance studio where she picks up dance moves on the sly. Even with her unfailing spirit, things aren't easy for Phoenix working two jobs and putting up with the mockery from city folks. Enter her knight in shining armor, CEO and studio owner Ron, who sweeps her off her feet and gives her a spot on the dance team.

At a Shanghai apartment, Mr Hou, a Nationalist official, gets ready to move to Taiwan upon the imminent defeat of the KMT during the Civil War. Mrs Hou gives an ultimatum to the rest of the tenants to move out on behalf of her husband, who is the "owner" of the flat and who is now planning to sell it. From the conversations with the rest, we find out that Hou has been a Hanjian during the Sino-Japanese War and that he has since taken over the apartment by force from the old landlord, Mr Kong. The tenants, including Mr Kong, Mrs Xiao, Little Broadcast (alias Mr Xiao, played by Zhao Dan) and a schoolteacher, Mr Hua, and his wife, initially plan to band together, but circumstances force them to find other ways out. Mr Hua tries to find a place to stay at the KMT-sponsored school he is teaching in. Little Broadcast and Mrs Xiao invest in black market gold. As the situation escalates, Mr Hua gets arrested by KMT agents and his young daughter falls desperately ill.

During World War II, a secret agent must seduce then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.

Set around the turn of the century in China, the White Lotus Society plots to put the next Emperor on the throne. To do this they want their protege to marry the Princess Sun Yu who possesses an important jade ring. They dispatch Yueng Kwan to fetch her. However, Yueng Kwan is a patriot, working for the revolutionary forces of Sun Yat Sen. He abducts Sun Yu and finds refuge with the father of the future hero Wong Fei Hung.

The lives of high-end prostitutes and their interactions with their clients in 4 brothels in fin de siècle Shanghai.

The cunning Cardinal Richelieu must save King Louis XIII from treachery within his inner circle.

Cheng, a young man who is set up by the chief of police, must leave the life he knows and Qiu, the woman he loves, to start again. After escaping prison Cheng quickly and violently moves his way up the ladder of Shanghais criminal underworld to become on the most powerful mob bosses in Shanghais history. But fame and notoriety take their toll when Cheng finds himself stuck between the looming Japanese army and the scheming local secret service. Matters are only made worse when he bumps into the love of his life QIU, along with her writer husband. Will love re-kindle in the dusk of an era?

Liang is a four-year-old little rebel, possessed of a pair of luminous eyes and a precociously indomitable will. His father deposits him at a well-appointed residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing, since his parents are often away. Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful, made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society.

A successful Japanese make-up artist collides with a tough-talking Shanghai taxi driver in this romantic dramedy that twists traditional roles by making the beauty expert a male and the cab driver a feisty female. Although he works in a glamorous industry, Naoki Mizushima can't help but notice that his life is anything but beautiful. Can the uncouth Lin Xi help him make over his life for the better?

A confident young man with a unique style and a solid entrepreneurial spirit has made it his mission to bring the small pleasures in life to a global market. As an aspiring inventor inspired by history's most infamous jokesters, he's determined to jump through all the hoops in order to realize his dreams. When he's not taken seriously amongst the locals stateside, he takes it upon himself to travel to Shanghai and broker a manufacturing deal on his own. Lost in Shanghai, Johnson discovers that it takes more than a bright idea to succeed. It takes guts, determination, and a fist full of sneezing powder.

Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.

To recover and ancient scroll, a Chinese agent battles the Japanese yakuza and British mercenaries.

Eternal Wave 密战 is a Chinese film set during the anti-Japanese occupation era starring Aaron Kwok, Zhao Li Ying and Zhang Han. It follows the main protagonist Lin Xiang who is a spy working underground to reestablish what was destroyed ruing the Battle of Shanghai. He meets a simple yet patriotic young lady who becomes his partner as they infiltrate the enemy as a couple. Apart from that, they cross paths with Liang Dong, a man whose motives are unclear.

World War II espionage drama, starring Preston Foster and Lynn Bari.

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

Dali Temple’s Official Qi Ling received the emperor’s secret edict again, and was ordered to track down the “Kowloon Pen” with supernatural magic power and crack its secrets. After several investigations, Qi Ling found that this case is actually related to his dead father. As the mechanism of Jiulong Pen were unveiled layer by layer, the case gradually became clear, but at this time, various forces in the DPRK and China were also surging, and everything is not as simple.

Before the breakout of the Sino-Japanese War, Hong, Wang, and Peng were best friends. Hong and Wang secretly joined the local guerrillas after the Japanese began invading China. Hong ran a small business and Wang worked as a courier for a Japanese trading firm, hiding their true identities in order to collect intelligence on the Japanese for the Eight Route Army, and established a railway guerrilla unit. Wang soon found out that the trading firm he was working for was indeed an intelligence unit of the Japanese. They infiltrated the Japanese special forces and eliminated many Japanese. Suspicions arise from the Japanese as to the real identity of the individuals suspected of being part of the railway guerrilla forces, so called Flying Tigers unit, so the Japanese began to form a counter-spying operation and other under-handed means by recruiting Chinese traitors to uncover and eliminate them all.

In 1937, eight hundred Chinese soldiers fight under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army.

Based on the true battle. August 31st, 1937. The Kuomintang Commander Yao Ziqing was ordered to protect Baoshan County. The Japanese army used land, sea and air forces to attack Yao's troops and tried to capture Baoshan County. Yao must stop Japenese army, no matter how hard it is.

Zhou Fang, the young master of Tongming Hall on the Shanghai Bund, fights Longde from Chamber of Commerce to avenge the murder of his father.

The film mainly describes the Ming Dynasty ancestors, Zhu Xi, established a secret military intelligence organization - nine gates (九门), to monitor the government officials and to control the people in the capital. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the minister of Military Affairs was attempting to rebel. As being the strongest assassin organization in the capital, nine gates (九门) were ordered to investigate the case. However, this case was intricately rooted, and things far exceeded everyone’s imagination. Even the nine internal forces were deeply involved...

In August 1937, Japanese troops occupied Shanghai. Three leaders in Shanghai go their separate ways: Jinrong Huang never sees other people; Xiaolin Zhang makes a great fortune and Yuesheng Du leaves for HongKong. Japanese form The Traitors Agents Headquarters to kill Chinese people. The patriotistic people composes the assassination team.

In 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out. San Mao, a wandering orphan, joins the army to participate in the Battle of Shanghai.

San mao (3 hairs) was a very popular Chinese comic strip first published in 1935-37, continued from 1948 into the 1990s, about a young orphan boy struggling with life in Shanghai.

In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.

As battle rages in Shanghai, a single battalion of soldiers led by Xie Jinyuan is ordered to hold back the Japanese forces at the Sihang warehouse. Girl scouts risk their lives to deliver food and medicine to the defenders.

A young Japanese-American orphan in California is taken in by a priest who is actually a Japanese secret agent and a samurai warrior. Due to the samurai's training, the boy murders his English teacher, kills the American parents who have adopted him, smuggles Japanese secret plans into the country, and eventually becomes the governor of California with plans to infiltrate Japanese spies into the state so they can take over.

During the Sino-Japanese War, Tsui-Ying flees with her father from the Japanese occupation. She meets a young man, Ling-Yun, and falls in love. Yet Tsui-Ying chooses to leave Ling-Yun and marries his uncle, a traitor who serves the Japanese. Out of heartbreak, Ling-Yun leaves the country to study abroad. In the meantime, Special Agent 001 leads the resistance against the Japanese. After Ling-Yun returns to Shanghai from the UK, he is surprised to find out his ex-lover has become the wife of his uncle Chao-Chun. Special Agent 001 continues their sabotage and the identify of the agent finally is revealed. The first Taiwanese-language spy film produced in Taiwan, The Best Secret Agent is a remake of the 1945 movie of the same name that caused a sensation in Shanghai.

800 Chinese soldiers guard the important warehouse district against the invading Japanese Army. Re-imagination of a famous (bordering on legendary) episode from the battle of Shanghai: 800 soldiers of the 88th regiment against what feels like the whole of Japan’s Imperial Army - think Thermopylae, Chinese version. A splendid, visually amazing gem which, in its own way, is also a last stand: of silent cinema, Shanghai style. (iffr)

Various parties and different motives all intersect at an inn on the eve of closure; at the center of everything is an elusive and enigmatic bandit. A band of mine robbers, a thief and some Japanese soldiers all set out to find a lucrative gold mine, unaware that they're heading right into a trap.

Three stories are told, respectively set in Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. The first two stories are about a Japanese person and a Taiwanese person. The last one is set in Shanghai with a story about a Japanese man and a Chinese woman. Some of the characters can speak Japanese and some of them Mandarin. Each story encompasses an experience of a foreigner, either from Japan ,Taiwan or China, with a native of the opposite country.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Zhang Qi Shan and his father were subject to experimentation by the traitor Zuo Qian Zhi. Ten years later, Zhang Qi Shan seeks his revenge. He arrives in Changsha for the first time and meets Er Yue Hong. The two join forces to go against Zuo Qian Zhi and the monster that threatens the city.